19 June 2014

Ruling-class ideas
->
a society where adopting ruling-class ideas is the best way to survive
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"successful" members of society adopt ruling-class ideas as their ego-state
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the ego fights tooth and nail to defend itself against the internal/external Other
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a psychological "blind spot" which means that the gap between "common sense" and "good sense" becomes a source of terror like the Lacanian Real which can't be acknowledged let alone confronted by the ego under normal circumstances.
->
ideology transmitted by narrative as "just so" stories justifying "common sense".

Terry Eagleton and Frederic Jameson both thus came to the conclusion that literary / narrative studies have a privileged insight into ideology (in particular, how we justify things to ourselves which don't have any real material backing); however, perhaps that's just their own ideology justifying being lit-crit specialists?

I attended a lecture by FJ once. I asked him: "I agree with everything you said, but what do we do?" If I remember right, he muttered something like "Well, Hardt and Negri seem to have some good ideas..."